Krauss didn’t look at the pictures. He seemed lost in some fantasy world. Meditating on murder. The guy made his skin crawl. Kovac had been in the box across from every kind of dirtbag known to man, but only a handful had given him the sense of being in the presence of something truly, darkly evil. Something in the blank, soulless stare made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“Yeah, well . . .” He stood up and rolled his shoulders, picked up the file folder, but left the photographs on the table. “It’s been nice talking to you, Gordon. I’m gonna take a break here, go get a cup of coffee, grab some dinner, take a piss. Do you need anything, Gordon? Can I get you anything? No? Suit yourself. I’ll see you later.”
He walked out of the interview room and went directly to the war room, where the whole gang had gathered to watch the show on a monitor.
“He’s not much of a conversationalist,” Kovac said.
“But is he our killer?” Mascherino asked. Standing among the guys (and Liska), in her prim black suit and sensible shoes, she looked like the headmistress of a school for incorrigible overgrown boys.
“This guy probably killed his own mother and ate her the day he hatched,” he said. “Whether he killed the Chamberlains or not, I don’t know. I want to get Diana Chamberlain in here and see if we can play one off the other.”
“Be careful how you approach her, Sam,” the lieutenant said. “After yesterday’s fiasco, if you push too hard, she’s going to use the L word. And not the one you’re thinking, Mr. Tippen,” she added, arching a brow at the resident reprobate.
Kovac said nothing about their Diana encounter of the morning. He wanted her rattled but not over the edge. It was a fine line, especially if Taylor was correct in his hunch that Diana had handed her brother a beat-down—or worse. She was already teetering on the edge. They had yet to locate Charlie. He could have been dead in the trunk of her car as she drove off to yoga class that morning for all they knew.
“Work your charm, Magic Mike,” he said, looking to Taylor. “She likes you. Reel her in.”
Taylor pulled his phone out and composed a text message. He read aloud as his fingers tapped the keys. “Ms. Chamberlain: Good news. Suspect in custody. Please contact me ASAP.”
“Let’s leave her alone for an hour or two,” Mascherino suggested. “See if she’s curious enough to make a move on her own.
“In the meantime,” she said, turning back to Kovac. “How long are you going to keep him in the box?”
She nodded at the monitor and Gordon Krauss.
“As long as I can without him being able to claim we infringed on his civil liberties. We’ve got plenty to charge him with. Assaulting Junior here, for starters.”
“Don’t forget the shoplifting,” Tippen threw in. “Razors ain’t cheap, you know.”
“Is that your excuse?” Liska asked sarcastically.
Tippen struck a smug pose and stroked his goatee with pride. “The ladies love my goat.”
“They ladies you know?” Liska rolled her eyes. “If you pay them enough, they won’t care if you smell like a goat.”
“Nikki, you think you’ve got something on Mr. Krauss, too?” Mascherino asked.
“I’ve got a witness who ID’d Krauss for assaulting a homeless guy with a hammer a few months ago. I think if we dig into the rightful owners of those IDs that were in his room, there could be a list of charges. Assault might be the tip of the iceberg. That’s a vulnerable community. A homeless guy goes missing, who even notices?”
“Owen Rucker from Rising Wings said Krauss came to them from a shelter,” Kovac said. “He knows the ins and outs of that life. He’d know when people got their checks for Social Security, disability, whatever.”
“He’s a predator,” Liska said. “The homeless are easy prey.”
“It’s safe to say Mr. Krauss won’t be going anywhere for some time,” the lieutenant said.
“No, but I don’t want him all snug as a bug in a jail bunk,” Kovac said. “I’d rather take a shot at breaking him down now. Once he’s arraigned and the court appoints him a mouthpiece, we won’t get another shot.”
“Hey! He’s moving,” Elwood announced, pointing at the screen.
They turned their collective attention back to the monitor to watch, as if Gordon Krauss was an exotic animal in a cage.
He shifted his posture on his chair, leaning forward slightly, changing the angle of his head to look down at the photographs Kovac had left on the table. He didn’t touch them. He took a good long look, absorbing all the details of the carnage of Lucien and Sondra Chamberlain hacked and bludgeoned to death.
When he had seen enough, he sat back, and a slow reptilian smile curled across his face.
Is he a killer? Mascherino had asked.
Oh, yeah. Now Kovac just had to find a way to get him to admit it.
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